All about Love

*My use of the first person isn't personal, it is used in the general sense*

Listen. I just finished All About Love by Bell Hooks, and let me tell you - that book deserves all the accolades it has gotten. I'm reading it 23 years later and I have been able to fully resonate with all her words.

I saw a tweet a few months ago (can't find it anymore) that said something along the lines of "You don't know what love is until you read All About Love by Bell Hooks - it will have you questioning your whole existence". I decided to take that as a challenge and boy, the person who tweeted that was right.

I learnt a lot about myself and the way I viewed love; in friendships, romantic relationships and familial ones too. Society has done a number on us.

Love has no expiry date. Whether written in 1450 or 2023, the true meaning of Love doesn't change. The way we as a society have altered the meaning however, is a different story. Love is now conditional, and we now understand it to have nuances and factors to it, but in reality it is simple.

A lot of the views surrounding love stem back to sexism and gender roles. Love is such a strong and deep emotion that it often causes us to act in ways that we would never if we didn't feel such a thing; and is thus associated with weakness - ergo connected to women, who are considered the weaker sex.

Love is happiness. It is care, it is trust and it is peace. According to 1 Corinthians 13:4 (not sorry to take it there) "Love is patient, Love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or or rude. It keeps no record of being wronged. Love never gives up, never loses faith and is always hopeful." In secular words, it is explained as "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." (pg. 4-5 & 178)

These words are so important because in many cases, our use of love is as though it is a noun - a thing - when in actuality we should view it as a verb. It is in our actions, our day-to-day ones; and not just reflected in grand gestures. I think for me, that is why I value acts of services so much, because you're showing me what you feel for me in small, everyday actions. Being in love isn't the end game, it is something we choose to continue to do every day. Love isn't just about the emotion you feel, it's reflected in the ways you show up for people; the feeling itself is just a fraction of what it actually is.

Hooks wrote that the economic growth in society, coinciding with the fact that there was a breakdown of the family and a prevalence of 'lovelessness' in the home meant that people were turning to materialistic goods to find gratification. Living in a capitalist society, the concept of community is no longer something value or put on a pedestal; resulting in the growth of individualism. It's a dog eat dog world. Love no longer has a breeding ground because we are so consumed by our own desires and attaining material wealth, that we feel as though commodities can replace the void that love has left.

Relating this to today, people are increasingly more cynical of love and loving (introduction and pg. 178) due to series' of disappointing relationships, where true love now just seems unattainable. I feel like we all know how bad the (romantic) market is, and so many of us just can't be bothered anymore. As a result, people are looking towards things that actually seem achievable - such as monetary gain. Now add the cost of living crisis to the mix; people do not have the time to worry about love - something that already seems impossible to acquire - and it is easier to close your heart to pain (which seems inevitable when love is involved) and open it to the possibility of finding satisfaction through economic success.

Hooks defines one factor of love to be ''nurturance and care'' of oneself and those around them (pg. 6). She believes that when we understand this, we realise that abuse and neglect cannot be considered in reference to love. In life we grow up thinking that love has so many conditions; 'I love you though even though I hurt you physically and emotionally and verbally'. Seeing love in its truest form, with no conditions attached to it, has been something that we have been socialised to think is something that can only be obtained in the fairytales. For many, it is more palatable to view love as something that cannot exist outside of struggle and suffering, and a lot of us have become okay with love as this definition because it means we do not have to confront the dynamics of love we faced as we were growing up or challenge the relationships we have had (platonic, familial and romantic) and question whether we have known real love.

In addition to this, so many people would rather be with a partner who is lacking than not have a partner at all (This is not to say that the 'perfect person' exists, we all have to compromise), which makes us more likely to accept hardship and pain, under the acceptance that there isn't a better alternative.

Men and women have been socialised differently, and therefore have been taught and fed different definitions of what love is. We are not in sync, and in order to be, learning and unlearning - on both sides, but mostly men - needs to be done. Because we are not in sync, a lot of relationships fail because each party has a different expectation as to what love should be; resulting in a failed dynamic.

While care and love are not mutually exclusive, it is important to understand that just because you are cared for, does not necessarily mean you are loved. Yes. This was a hard pill to swallow. We think love cannot exist without it's challenges, when in reality love exists DESPITE the challenges we face.

Reading the book will give you more insight than I could ever, but I just wanted to write about some things I took away from reading this book, and things that stuck out to me. I still hate non-fiction, this is an exception.

Love is as love does.